(Charles-André Coderre + Matthieu Arsenault | 5:58 | Canada | b + w | sound | 16mm | 2024)

Fractures Chimiques – ON/OFF is the result of an audiovisual performance combining 16mm projection and reactive electronic music. Using a sensor device attached directly to the screen, the light information escaping from the projectors is collected and transferred to modular synthesizers which generate the film’s live soundtrack. Fractures Chimiques – ON/OFF is the first film of a series of experiments on the relationship between music and film in performative contexts.

(Jiayi Chen | :58 | China | color | silent | 8 to 16mm | 2023)

Unsplit double 8 film printed onto 16mm. Part of an on-going hand-process project that echos 17th century Chinese novels and the current political plights. Drifting from being controlled and out-of-control, from film negative to positive, from compositional clash and evasion, the film applies labor-intensive processes, questioning suppression choreographically.

(Brittany Gravelly + Ken Linehan | 9:00 | USA | b + w & color | sound | 16mm | 2023)

One of a set of cinematic tarot cards in which we collaborate with the subject to create layered vignettes infused with personal symbolism. By choosing costumes, objects, actions and locations that represent their own visions, the stars of these films bring forth what they want to manifest mythically and physically within their lives. Inspired by their particular choices and personalities, we collaborate throughout the shoot, double-exposing each roll of film as a toss of the alchemical I ching to the beguiling discoveries of the serendipitous while adding a spectral layer. Sealed into the receptive emulsion, these layered iconographies are then awakened with the projection of light and then affirmed by audiences who may recognize parts of their own dreams.

(Zack Parrinella | 2:04 | USA | color | sound | 16mm | 2024)

An antagonizing balance between the existence and perception of things.

(Rankin Renwick | 6:20 | USA | color | sound | 16mm to digital | 2019)

The instrumental music by Marisa Anderson is a lament for Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee boy who drowned in 2015, mixed with the sounds of ocean waves and whale breaths.  The images came to my mind during the 17 days that the orca whale mother pushed her dead infant towards the surface in the Salish Sea in fall 2018 in what biologists referred to as a “tour of grief.”

(Frédéric Moffet | 8:05 | USA & Canada | b + w & color | 16mm to digital | 2023)

A film titled “Dance Movie” (aka Rollerskate) appears in many Warhol filmographies, but no work with this title can be found in the Collection. The lost film, starring dancer Fred Herko gliding on a single roller skate, was shot in 1963. Herko was a talented dancer and choreographer who cofounded and performed with the Judson Dance Theater. Herko was also associated with the Mole People, a group of queer men and women who came together to get high on speed and listen to opera. In October 1964, unhoused and strung out on drugs, Herko leapt out of an open window while dancing naked to Mozart’s Coronation Mass in C Major. Although the current location of Dance Movie is unknown, accounts of it do exist, including Warhol’s evocative description in POPism of Herko “gliding in dance attitudes and looking as perfect as the ornament on the hood of a car.” Goddess of Speed poetically reimagines the missing film.

(Yue Hua | 3:10 | China | color | sound | 16mm to digital | 2023)

A film about the female gaze and self-acceptance. In spring 2023, a physical illness forced me to re-examine my relationship with my body. Scars, spots, skin, hair, and my unflattering voice, everything belongs to my body. Shoot and direct animation on 16mm film. Content warning: Nudity.

(David Walls | 10:40 | Paraguay | b + w | sound | Super 8mm to digital | 2024)

A woman ventures alone into the woods where, after a unexpected encounter, the odd breaks into her disenchanted reality.

(Ellery Bryan | 1:05 | USA | color | silent |Double 8mm to digital | 2024)

Double 8 film shot in a former quarry – meditating on being surrounded by extraction and burial, the type that uncovers the silver necessary to make film, attempting to engage with a wounded landscape through ritual and adornment as opposed to removal. Accompanied by an audio recording taken the day after my partner died.

(Claire Maske | 2:30 | USA | b + w | sound | 16mm to digital )

A visual play on the title, this film explores forms of intimacy.

(Mark Durand | 5:28 | Canada | color | sound | 8mm to digital | 2023)

Immortals is an experimental documentary short film shot in 8mm that explores the introspection of an artist, Bettina Szabo. The film delves into her relationship with her sense of belonging, her body, her imagination, and nature. Sometimes one must lose oneself to find oneself better, and burn everything down to start anew on a solid foundation.

(Dominic Angerame | 12:00 | USA | b + w | sound | 16mm to digital | 2024)

In Aeon, Dominic Angerame draws parallels between the earthly and the heavenly, linking the San Francisco cityscape and city dwellers to outer space. Filmed during the Covid-19 lockdown, Aeon celebrates Angerame’s reunion with friends and responds to the new ways of interacting with the world on different levels. Using a meta-narrative and self-referential approach to storytelling, Angerame brings the (holy) spirit to life, filling the spaces he captures with energy, which is otherwise unattainable and invisible the naked eye, but significantly transforms our lives. Aeon is one of Angerame’s major and most mature works to date, which demonstrates the potential of experimental filmmaking in superimposing images that are seemingly disparate, yet uncannily familiar.” — Kornelia Boczkowska, author of “Lost Highways, Embodied Travels: The Road Movie in American Experimental Film and Video”

(Hannu Nieminen | 3:36 | Finland | b + w | sound | Super 8mm to digital | 2024)

Vanishing point is “1) a point at which receding parallel lines seem to meet when represented in linear perspective, 2) a point at which something disappears or ceases to exist.” This experimental film is a meditation on the vanishing of things, species, individuals and, maybe, the whole human race. Film has been created by chemically destroying and mutilating black & white super-8 film material.

(Biviana Chauchi | 3:00 | Spain | b + w | silent | 16mm to digital | 2023)

Breakage of a solid element, especially of the body or matter.

The 7th Engauge Experimental Film Festival celebrates sprocket-driven, artist-made experimental film, presenting seven programs of shorts and one feature over the course of four nights at NWFF’s cinema in Capitol Hill. All work featured in the festival originates on film stock.

The festival features a 35mm presentation of Kathryn Ramey’s El Signo Vacío (the empty sign), and a closing-night live performance from Lori Goldston and friends’ of original compositions over six films, presented on 16mm.

⚠️ Please note: NWFF patrons will be strongly encouraged to wear masks that cover both nose and mouth while in the building. We are not currently checking vaccination cards.